One of Leopard’s “big new features” is a feature for those .Mac members who got suckered into spending $100/year for Apple’s suite of services which probably are only worth about $50/year, if that much. It has to do with the Finder’s improved sharing features (file sharing, screen sharing, etc.), and it’s called Back to My Mac.
Continue reading »

Tags: Back to My Mac, file sharing, Finder, iDisk, internet, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac, Mac OS X Leopard, network, review, Screen Sharing

Apple Remote Desktop is an app that has been around for awhile that provided the ability for an administrator to share and manage the screens of other computers on the network. However, while ARD was great for someone who was an administrator on a vast network of many client computers in order to manage them all, what about someone who just wanted to look at something on their other computer, or someone who wanted to quickly help out a family member on another network? Apple Remote Desktop just isn’t suited, aimed, or priced for something as incidental as that. However, Leopard brings along a brand new Screen Sharing solution to the table, so how well does it work?
Continue reading »

Tags: Back to My Mac, collaboration, features, Finder, iChat, internet, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, network, Remote Desktop, review, Screen Sharing

Apple has made a number of changes in Leopard when it comes to printing. Some of these changes are nice, but others make me wonder if Apple has completely broken things.
Continue reading »

Tags: connecting, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, network, organization, panel, printing, problems, review, sharing

Yesterday, I began talking about the general improvement of the user experience in Leopard when messing with network settings, something that we all have to do one time or another. That is, if we have any aspirations to get on the internet. Yesterday’s LFP on the AirPort Utility was for those of us who have our own AirPort base station to manage, but today, I look at the Leopard’s new treatment of connecting to networks.
Continue reading »

Tags: connection, internet, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, management, network, review, settings, System Preferences

NOTE: All names except for my name have been changed to protect their identity, not that anyone would really care about their identity anyway even if I didn’t cloak them.

Gasp! Douglas is actually using and reviewing a social networking website! Oh my gosh! People predicted that this would never happen until hell froze over, Paris Hilton bought FOX News, and deep-fried pickle hearts started tasting like polish sausages! But this past summer, the tech world was hit by two big storms. The first one was, of course, the iPhone, but the second one was the opening of Facebook’s new Apps API. So this summer I decided, what the heck, I’d see what all of the fuss was about. And so, for this, the thirty-fifth and very last review of my Webmacster87.info Month of Reviews, I’m going to write this review differently than I have all of the past thirty-four reviews: by telling a story. Here is the story of my experiences with Facebook.
Continue reading »

Tags: article, Facebook, friends, network, Personal, rants, review, social networking, Web 2.0

There’s a lot of corners and niches around the Web 2.0, meaning that your online world is split up among all these places. Mugshot is a website that aggregates your data from most of the major Web 2.0 services out there and display it on a single page for anyone to see, however it’s pretty apparent that the site was designed by someone who couldn’t come up with an original idea of their own.
Continue reading »

Tags: friends, identities, network, photos, review, services, Web 2.0

I picked up Little Snitch along with the latest MacHeist/MacUpdate bundle, and thought I’d give it a try. I know that there are a number of Mac users that find it essential, but I didn’t, and found myself turning it off pretty quickly.

The general idea behind Little Snitch is that many applications have an internet “call home” feature–cases where they will connect to the internet through a network connection when you may not know. One classic example of a “call home” function would be a Software Update feature, which many applications come with these days. What Little Snitch does is that any time an application attempts to make a network connection, it will bring up a window notifying you what the application is doing. You can choose to deny an application from making its connection, or you can allow it. There are a number of options for allowing it: you can restrict the application to the same server, the same port, both, or allowing the app to make any kind of network connections. In addition, you can authorize either that particular connection, similar connections until the app quits, or those kind of connections forever.

There are some conscious people who would want to know about all of these connections and control which can be established and which can’t, but I’m just not one of these people. After a little bit, the notices seemed to get a bit annoying (reminding me of the infamous Windows Vista Cancel/Allow windows), and I was just allowing all connections that it presented me with. So I turned it off. But although I personally find it kind of a niche product, for the people who would actually care about these connections, Little Snitch is a good (if not a bit pricey) choice.

Final Rating:

Tags: Mac, network, preferences, review, security, Software, utility